IMPEACHMENT: THE POLL; Republicans' Image Eroding Fast, Poll Shows

As the House of Representatives moved toward a vote on impeaching President Clinton, the Republican Party's standing with the public dropped significantly, matching its lowest rating in the past 14 years, the latest New York Times/CBS News Poll shows.

While impeachment appears all but inevitable, half of the public still expects some other outcome, suggesting at least the possibility of further erosion in the Republican Party's image when the reality of only the second impeachment of a President in American history sinks in.

Six of 10 Americans said Republicans in Congress were out of touch with the public's wishes on impeachment. The opposition to impeachment -- 62 percent said they wanted their representative to vote against it -- is reflected in every sector of society: every region, age group and income group, with the exception of those respondents who described themselves as Republicans.

There were signs that public opinion could prove treacherous for Mr. Clinton in the weeks ahead: About 4 in 10 Americans believe it would be better for the country for Mr. Clinton to resign should the House send articles of impeachment to the Senate for trial.

Still, in many ways, the poll found remarkable stability in public opinion across a year of turmoil and scandal. The public continues to distinguish between the man and the President: as in January when the Lewinsky scandal was first disclosed, Americans are critical of Mr. Clinton's personal behavior but give high marks for his job performance.

Mr. Clinton's job-approval rating stands in sharp contrast to that of Richard M. Nixon after the House Judiciary Committee recommended his impeachment in 1974: 65 percent approved of Mr. Clinton's job performance this week, while only 24 percent held that view of Mr. Nixon just before his resignation.

The survey was based on telephone interviews conducted nationwide with 1,666 adults on Sunday, Monday and Tuesday, and another 326 on Thursday, after Mr. Clinton ordered the bombing of Iraq. The margin of sampling error for the entire poll is plus or minus two percentage points.

The survey found that, at least in this snapshot of public opinion, Republicans have paid a price for their aggressive pursuit of the President. The percentage of Americans who held a favorable view of the party -- 40 percent -- was at its lowest level in the 14 years that the New York Times/CBS News Poll has been asking the question, statistically matching the level of 43 percent recorded in early 1996 after a budget impasse resulted in a partial shutdown of the Federal Government.

In October, before the 1998 midterm elections, public opinion of the Republican Party was evenly split, 45 percent favorable and 46 percent unfavorable.

The party's image worsened as this week progressed: 42 percent of respondents had a favorable opinion of the Republicans early in the week; that dropped to 33 percent among people polled on Thursday, as the reality of impeachment set in and Washington grappled with the confluence of crises at home and abroad. The margin of sampling error for the one-night finding was plus or minus 6 percentage points.

By contrast, the number of people holding a favorable view of the Democratic party held steady during the week at 56 percent.

By a ratio of more than 2 to 1, Americans said that the impeachment vote should have been delayed while the United States engaged in military action against Iraq.

The survey also showed that, by a ratio of 2 to 1, Americans believe the timing of the air strikes had more to do with a need to respond to Saddam Hussein's defiance of United Nations weapons inspectors than with any effort by President Clinton to divert attention from impeachment.

The poll, intended to measure day-to-day shifts in public opinion during this climactic week, found that the public was only just beginning to recognize that the House was on the verge of impeaching Mr. Clinton.

On Sunday, 31 percent of respondents said they expected the House to impeach the President, with 50 percent predicting that the matter would be resolved through a compromise measure like censure.

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By the eve of the anticipated impeachment, only half of Americans expected it to occur; the rest still foresaw some lesser punishment.

The public did, however, want to see some punishment for the President. Fifty-four percent said Congress should censure Mr. Clinton for his actions, an option that the Republican leaders have refused to permit the House to vote on.

One measure of the opposition to impeachment was that even Republicans were divided over it, with 76 percent of self-described conservative Republicans favoring, while all other Republicans were split, 49 percent in favor and 41 percent against.

Other polls have shown higher support for the President to resign if, in fact, he is impeached by the House. But because a minority of the public still confuses impeachment by the House with removal by the Senate, the Times/CBS News Poll pointed out the difference as part of the resignation question: ''If the full House votes to send impeachment articles to the Senate for a trial, then do you think it would be better for the country if Bill Clinton resigned from office, or not?'' Forty-three percent said better, 53 percent disagreed.

How the Poll Was Conducted

The latest New York Times/CBS News Poll is based on telephone interviews conducted Sunday through Tuesday with 1,666 adults across the United States, and with 326 additional adults on Thursday.

The Thursday interviews were conducted in the second day of United States air strikes on Iraq to confirm that results from the first three days still held after the military action began.

This survey was organized as a tracking poll, with individual daily samples, devised to capture any day-to-day shifts in public opinion, if they occurred, as a vote on impeachment approached in the House of Representatives.

The sample of telephone exchanges called was randomly selected by a computer from a complete list of more than 42,000 active residential exchanges across the country.

Within each exchange, random digits were added to form a complete telephone number, thus permitting access to both listed and unlisted numbers. Within each household, one adult was designated by a random procedure to be the respondent for the survey.

The results have been weighted to take account of household size and number of telephone lines into the residence and to adjust for variations in the sample relating to geographic region, sex, race, age, and education.

In theory, in 19 cases out of 20 the results based on such samples (combining all three days) will differ by no more than three percentage points in either direction from what would have been obtained by seeking out all American adults.

For smaller sub-groups the margin of sampling error is larger. For example, for any single day's results from Sunday through Tuesday, it is plus or minus four percentage points. For results from Thursday's polling, it is plus or minus six points.

In addition to sampling error, the practical difficulties of conducting any survey of public opinion may introduce other sources of error into the poll. Variations in the wording and order of questions, for example, may lead to somewhat different results.